Well, that's the Scotland portion of my trip over now.  I'm sad of course but it's always nice to get home.  The flight was uneventful (the way I like them) and I managed to only sleep about 30 minutes; a good thing.  We're all packed in our vans now and have a 4 hour ride back to Binghampton then an hour ride up to Cortland from my cousiin.  I should be home by 22:00 just in time to pass out and sleep wonderfully.

 

Hanging out with Ross yesterday was fun.  We grabbed lunch at a microbrewery in Glasgow with litres of beer, did some CD shopping and then more beer back near the train station.  I rode the train back to Edinburgh far too early and ran into some scouts from Maryland.  By sheer coincidence, Fudge walked by as we were loading bags into the van so I left my bags with them and went off for a ouple more pints and a wander around the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  It was a nice final visit before meeting back up with the scouts at about 10pm. 

 

Today has been largely uneventful and I'm completely worn out.  I'll update more later.

Well, that's camp over for two more years.  Home-Stay concludes today and I've had two very relaxing days with Anne and Paul and their three huskies.  I think this is the longest amount of time I've spent around dogs in such close quarters but it's been fun...  I think I've even been adopted into the pack.  Just like children though, I'm glad they're not mine.  Today I should be meeting up with Ross for a while and then heading off to Edinburgh to meet up with the rest of the group.  Our flight is at 09:30 tomorrow, or something like that, arriving in Newark at 15:30, Binghampton at ~20:00 and then home by maybe 21:30 or so.  This trip seems to go faster and faster each time that I'm here.

Camp itself was a good time although different as usual.  More and more people are coupled up and a few of my good friends weren't here this year so I ended up feeling a bit like a tag-along at times.  It was still a really good camp though.  The Atholl Experience went well again and we've already started planning for next time even though I do not intend to be on the team.  It was hard enough keeping up with year and I found mysef with just enough energy to "go big" only once a day, usually the mornings.  I was still giving it my all for the other session of the day, just not getting totally covered in mud as I might have in previous years.  After the first 2 days I started to lose my voice as well so that was a little bit of an issue.  My back was already sore from sleeping on the floor for a week but seemed to resove itself around the weekend (day 5) Blisters and other sores set in on my feet around day 7.  (Oh god, just got invaded by huskies...  they've not yet understood that they're not lapdogs and thus I have now two 50lb dogs laying across me)  On the plus side I could still outrun most of the kids and staff, perfected my cartwheels, yelled all week long and generally make the most of my limitted time.

The weather couldn't have been better.  It was a near heat wave for the first week which was great for setup and trying to get the kids rallied.  My nose ended up sunburned, but what's better than getting a tan in Scotland, right?  The weather held over the weekend but started to fade towards the end and showers came Sunday night.  The rest of the week was partly rainy which helped to cool things off and let me sleep a little better.  It rained on and off for camp takedown which is always a pain, but after being wet and dirty all week it's not much of an issue for our team.

The last night at camp was great as always.  My little camera died about halfway through the week so I hardly have any pictures to document it.  The reception at the castle was great al always (I'll grab some photos from Mike) and we managed to get sauced before the dinner even started.  Dinner as well was also great, more bottles of wine and good food.  After dinner was the Cleidh (sp?) and I danced more than any other one I've been to.  Luckily no wipeouts or broken partners dancing partners.  After the dancing came the after parties in the subcamps.  I sort of remember these as a slideshow of random memories.  There was a lot of singing and drinking.  For some reason during the night I seemed to be collecting random items; the final booty consisted of a pair of sneakers from a Californian, some Canadian eppelets, an Austrian whistle, an Angus Scouts tshirt, ...I think there was more, I can't rememeber, but I'll figure it out when I get back to NY.

On the Satuday of camp I started up the Go-Go Party Game which ended up being a pretty good success.  I handed out 2 decks of cards about half of which I think were actively traded.  The Scots seemed to get into and with everything it'll be interested to see how they take it and evolve it (the banana cheer and shark cheer the Ed and I introduced to them in 98 have turned into fully fledged songs, "...is for dicks" from 2002 is a common phrase and "Hooray for..." is just as well.)  For next camp I'll make up fully laminated cards so they'll last easier and be more resiliant to the rain.  I myself pulled a King from the initial draw, traded down to a 7 just so it'd be more fun to play the game, retrieved a stollen Ace which then became mine.  I traded the ace for a shirt down to a jack, swapped the jack for a 6 because I felt bad about drawing all over a drunk person with a sharpie, upgraded the 6 to a 9 to help someone take down their tent and traded up to a 10 just because someone thought I was awesome and should have a better card.

I think the middle weekend was athe best part of camp with all my friends who weren't there over the week showing up.  Ross, Gemma and Al, and Kay and Anne all camped over in the caravan park (campground) next to camp for two nights.  I really miss having all of them at camp as I'd said earlier.  They all seem to miss it to and intend to be back at the next camp. 

That's about it for now.
--pete